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AN  ADDRESS 


SETTING  FORTH  THE  OBJECTS  OF  THE 


CITIZENS'  ALLIANCE 


^ 


OF  HELENA,  MONTANA 


iV 


Address  by  the  Citizens'  Alliance  Explaining  the  Purposes 
of   the   Organization 


HE  Citizens'  Alliance  is  pleased  to  make  to  the  public  an 
authentic  confession  of  its  faith.     It  is  a  Society  without  con- 
cealment of  the  principles  which  it  professes,  or  the  objects  it  has 
in  view.     In  justification  of  its  existence,  it  appeals  to  the  sobriety, 
intelligence  and  patriotism  of  the  American  people.     It  is  an  or- 
ganization in  defense  of  Labor,  from  which  it   would  remove   all 
-^  shackles,  and  of  Libert}',  which  its  members  believe  is  a  fact,  and 
">-•  not  a  mere  name.     It  is    opposed    to    boycotts,    to    lockouts,    to 
~^    strikes,  and  to  all  conspiracies  concocted  with  a  view  to  mvade 
~^    the  rights  and  privileges  of    American    Citizens.     It    would  fain 
^   augment  the  prosperity  of  the  Commonwealth  by  enforcing  a  new 
>r  Declaration  of    Independence  whereby  Enterprise  should  have 
g   ample  opportunity  to  develop  the  latent  resources  of  the  State, 
as:    enlarging  the  scope  of  industry  and  the  rewards  of  toil  by  all 
«    normal  and  lawful  means,  and  in  securing  to  employees  and  all 
laborers  a  share  in  the  increasing  prosperity  which  elsewhere  so 
bountifully  prevails.     To  the  end  that  there  may  be  a  demand 
for  labor.  Enterprise  must  be  free  to  enter  upon  industries  new 
and  old,  of  uncertain  profit,  witli  no  obstructions   which  may  not 
be  foreseen,  and  without  the  power  to  throttle   it  at  the  whim  of 
caprice  or  passion  or  ignorance. 

It  will  by  all  appropriate  means  endeavor  to  rescue  Labor 
Organizations  from  the  management  and  control  of  agitators,  who 
are  without  deference  to  the  rights  of  others  and  who  do  not 
comprehend  the  tangled  skein  of  our  industrial  organization. 

It  will  assist  so  far   as   it  may  those  independent  citizens 

^91087 


— 4— 

who  refuse  to  lock  their  labor  in  adamantine  grooves  with  change- 
less compensation,  and  who  value  intelligence,  efficiency,  fidelity 
and  integrity  as  qualities  entitled  to  be  considered  in  employment 
and  reward.  It  resents  and  resists  interference  with  the  conduct 
of  individual  enterprise  and  business,  and  maintains  the  right  of 
every  American  to  conduct  his  own  affairs  as  his  experience, 
judgment  and  ambition  may  dictate.  It  denies  the  binding  force 
of  any  rules  designed  and  intended  to  curtail  that  independence 
which  is  the  heritage  of  Freemen,  and  which  has  resulted  in  the 
development  of  a  stalwart  citizenship  unparalleled  in  the  history  of 
laborers  in  any  other  country.  It  holds  that  rules  which  cannot  be  for- 
mulated in  words  and  enacted  into  statutory  law  cannot  and 
ought  not  to  be  enforced  by  conspiracies,  simply  because  they 
are  supposed  to  be  helpful  to  a  class,  and  that  obedience  to  such 
rules  with  such  a  genesis  and  sanction  would  ultimate  in  a  citizenship 
at  once  humiliated  and  pusillanimous.  It  agrees  with  Thomas 
Jefferson  that  class  legislation  is  vicious,  and  that  it  can  have  no 
fruitage  but  that  of  mischief.  It  is  organized  to  protect  and  de- 
fend in  full  vigor  those  rights  of  Life,  Liberty  and  Property  which 
are  the  heritage  of  American  Freemen,  the  gift  of  our  fathers, 
rights  inalienable  to  us  and  formidable  to  tyrants  only.  Its  mem- 
bers believe  that  the  rewards  of  labor  to  a  certain  extent  are 
regulated  by  inexorable  laws,  and  that  it  is  folly  to  chain  all  labor 
together  by  iron  bands,  disregarding  the  value  of  its  product  and 
the  efficiency  of  employees,  so  that  men  shall  be  paid  for  the  lapse 
of  time  rather  than  for  the  labor  done. 

It  cannot  consent  that  the  relations  between  employer 
and  employee  shall  be  regulated  by  tumults,  or  riot  or  conspirac}-, 
but   it  affirms   the   freedon  of    employer    and    employee,    each 


— 5— 
according  to  his  ability,  to  regulate  between  themselves  the  com- 
pensation to  be  paid  and  received.  It  will  especially  undertake, 
so  far  as  it  may  without  impertinent  interference,  to  see  that 
Laborers  are  not  overreached  by  greed,  or  covetousness  or  oppres- 
sion, but  that  all  Laborers,  union  and  non-union,  shall  have  a  fair 
share  in  the  opportunities  and  products  of  toil. 

By  the  common  consent  of  all  observers,  Montana  is  not 
securing  and  has  not  secured  its  rightful  share  of  that  large 
migration  which  is  peopling  the  West  with  citizens  and  homes 
and  multiplying  industries  on  every  hand. 

There  can  be  no  question  but  that  this  failure  on  our 
part  to  obtain  the  increasing  population  invited  by  our  wonderful 
resources  is  largly  due  to  the  fact  that  labor  organizations  formed 
to  promote  the  welfare  of  their  members  have  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  irresponsible  and  reckless  agitators  and  advisers  whose 
activity  has  misled  these  associations  into  courses  which  their 
membership  does  not  sanction.  It  will  examine  into  the  merits 
of  boycotts,  of  strikes,  of  lockouts,  and  all  other  efforts  to  coerce 
men  to  action  which  their  free  will  does  not  approve,  and  will  en- 
deavor to  reconcile  these  conflicting  interests  according  to  those 
principles  of  Liberty  which  are  the  common  heritage  of  us  all. 
It  will  not  consent  that  experimental  industries  shall  be  throttled 
in  their  inception  by  exorbitant  or  extortionate  demands,  but  will 
insist  that  they  have  free  opportunity,  in  perfect  liberty,  to  test 
the  event  of  their  success  or  failure. 

It  believes  that  by  this  interference,  idleness  is  ordained 
to  many  persons  in  Montana,  who  are  eager  to  share  the  risks 
and  accept  the  rewards  which  newly  developed  industries  may 
proffer. 


— 6— 

There  is  no  definition  of  Liberty  which  does  not  affirm 
the  right  of  every  man  to  control  and  manage  his  own  property 
and  labor  without  let  or  hindrance  from  any  other  person,  so  long 
as  he  does  not  invade  the  rights  of  another.  It  has  been  sup- 
posed that  Life,  Liberty  and  the  Pursuit  of  Happiness  were  the 
unquestioned  possession  of  every  American  since  our  fathers 
adopted  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  that  the  Constitu- 
tions of  the  United  States,  and  of  the  State  of  Montana,  had  made 
our  title  to  that  possession  immutable. 

In  the  good  year  1776,  the  year  of  our  Declaration  of 
Independence,  Adam  Smith,  in  his  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  defined 
the  laborers'  Liberty  in  the  following  words: 

"The  property  which  every  man  has  in  his  own  labor 
as  it  is  the  original  foundation  of  all  other  property,  so  it  is  the 
most  sacred  and  inviolable.  The  patrimony  of  the  poor  man  lies 
in  the  strength  and  dexterity  of  his  own  hands,  and  to  hinder  his 
employing  this  strength  and  dexterity  in  what  manner  he  thinks 
proper,  without  injury  to  his  neighbor,  is  a  plain  violation  of  this 
most  sacred  property.  It  is  a  manifest  encroachment  upon  the 
just  liberty,  both  of  the  workman  and  those  who  might  be  dis- 
posed to  employ  him.  As  it  hinders  the  one  from  working  at 
what  he  thinks  proper,  so  it  hinders  the  others  from  employing 
whom  they  think  proper." 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  and  every 
other  judical  tribunal  before  whom  the  question  has  arisen,  have 
affirmed  this  definition  of  Liberty,  and  hold  that  the  privilege  of 
contract  is  both  a  Liberty  and  a  Property,  the  right  to  which  no 
one  can  be  deprived  of  without  due  process  of  law.  The  own- 
ership of  property  implies  and  signifies  dominion  over  it,  and  this 
right  is  secured  to  Citizens  of  the  United  States  by  guaranties  as 
perspicuous  and  words    as   solemn    as    man    can    invent.     Any 


attempt  to  invade  this  right  by  other  than  statutory  enactments 
recalls  the  tyranny  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  espionage  which  is 
one  of  the  processes  whereby  these  rights  are  here  invaded  is  as 
wicked  and  un-American  as  any  that  obtained  in  Southern  Europe 
in  the  Dark  Ages.  We  cannot  consent  that  in  free  America 
there  shall  be  a  recurrence  to  the  barbaric  practices  and  imper- 
tinences which  then  and  there  prevailed. 

The  abuse  of  authority  which  walking  delegates,  griev- 
ance committees  and  the  more  active  and  irresponsible  agitators 
in  some  of  the  labor  unions  manifest,  and  their  action  in  inter- 
fering with  the  independence  of  the  Citizen,  too  often  rise  in 
atrocity  to  a  crime,  and  is  made  the  subject  of  frequent  com- 
plaint by  intelligent  and  independent  members  of  these  unions 
who  comprehend  their  real  uses  and  know  the  limitations  which  pa- 
triotism and  interest    and  duty  aHke  dictate. 

The  Citizens'  Alliance  is  not  opposed  to  Labor  Organi- 
zations; it  only  resists  and  resents  the  abuse  of  their  authority, 
and  will  do  all  that  lies  in  its  power  to  direct  the  actions  of  these 
Labor  Societies  into  right  and  useful  paths.  Believing  that  Labor 
seeks  only  its  just  reward,  and  that  employers  should  accord  this 
in  full  measure,  it  will  be  the  aim  of  the  Alliance  by  appeals  to 
reason  and  peaceful  methods  to  bring  about  harmonious  action 
between  Capital  and  Labor,  which  are  but  two  halves  of  a  golden 
whole. 

In  this  spirit  and  for  this  purpose  it  has  been  organized, 
and  has  met  so  wide-spread  and  universal  an  approval  as  to  ren- 
der it  certain  that  the  turmoil  and  strife  which  have  characterized 
labor  troubles  in  recent  years  will  approach  a    swift    and    happy 

^91087 


conclusion.  Every  Citizen  approving  of  this  high  purpose  and  de- 
siring to  maintain  his  independence,  and  wishing  to  aid  in  so  happy 
a  consummation,  may  propose  his  name  and  become  a  member  of 
this  Organization. 

The  Citizens'  Alliance  covets  no  antagonism,  and 
professes  no  principles  not  guaranteed  to  every  American,  and 
essential  to  his  self-respect,  and  if  in  assertion  and  defense  of 
these  principles  the  thoughtless  or  selfish  shall  visit  upon  it  their 
condemnation,  we  confidently  appeal  to  that  ultimate  tribunal 
which  finally  determines  all  contentions  —  the  sober  judgment 
of  our  Countrymen. 

— The  Citizens'  Alliance  of  Helena. 

WM.  MUTH,  SHERWOOD   WHEATON, 

Secretary.  Leader. 

Helena,  Montana., 

August  i8,  i^oj. 


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